


Daughter

by kathrynthegreat



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-10
Updated: 2009-12-10
Packaged: 2017-10-04 08:14:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathrynthegreat/pseuds/kathrynthegreat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had survived disastrous things before: an exploding man, gunshot wounds, but a seventeen year-old girl would be his undoing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daughter

It was his fault Claire started smoking. She watched him light up enough times that eventually she wanted to try it for herself. It didn't matter that her regenerative powers negated any damage the smoke caused to her pristine lungs. Apparently, addiction can happen to anyone.

Nathan couldn't be a father to her, so instead he became her friend. He took cues from his brother and treated Claire like an adult, was honest with her, and answered her questions. It seemed a good arrangement at first, but like so many things, Nathan didn't see the consequences of their actions until it was too late.

"Tell me about _her_," she asked, her voice soft in the warm night air. He was staring at the reflection of the mansion in the pool. The water was still as glass, the image picture perfect.

"What do you want to know?" He sipped bourbon from the cut crystal glass before swirling it once and setting it down.

"Everything. I want to know everything."

And so he told her the brief history between her biological mother and himself. How they had met at the diner she worked at and had one night together. That he didn't see her again until she was six months pregnant and in need of money.

"I – we didn't plan on having…"

"Me."

"Yes, you. We were both so young. I was in school. Meredith said she was keeping the baby. All she wanted from me was money to live off of. She didn't want to marry me; I asked." He watched Claire's face then, hoping for some kind of absolution for his past sins. Her eyes met his for a second before she looked away again, a faint blush marking her cheeks.

"Go on."

"I never saw the baby…you. She wouldn't let me. Whenever I went by her apartment, she refused to answer the door. And then there was the fire." He stopped there and waited. "Maybe I didn't try hard enough. I don't know." She was silent for so long he thought she might have fallen asleep.

"Did you love her?" Spoken so quietly he almost missed it.

He stood up then, retrieving his drink before answering. "No, I didn't. I barely knew her. And I didn't know you at all." He walked around the pool and wished, not for the first time, that the past had played out differently. "Good night, Claire. Don't stay up too late."

 

He could understand why she wanted to spend her summers in the mansion. She was a young girl desperate to know about her roots, who and where she came from. Plus, they had a pool. She spent most of the days sunning herself in a barely there red bikini, and he did his best to not stare.

Manuel, the hired worker, didn't hide the way he looked at her at all. When Nathan witnessed him talking to Claire, he decided to fire him. It didn't even occur to him to think about why.

To prevent the firing of all the male staff of the house, he approached her the next morning as she was rubbing lotion on her arms and settling in for a day of leisure.

"Why don't you get dressed and help me out at the office today?"

She looked over at him for a moment, considering. "Are you serious?"

"Yeah, I'm serious. My assistant is out on maternity leave. You would be doing me a huge favor." He adjusted his tie and checked his watch before walking towards her. She smiled at him, and it was like the sun breaking through the clouds. He dismissed the way something so small and simple made his stomach dip like he was a kid on a roller coaster ride.

"Okay."

And that became their routine. She went to the office with him every morning, kept busy answering his phone, filing, and making copies. He could watch her as closely as he liked and not feel wrong about it. Instead, he could insist that he was just being protective of her.

He wasn't staring at her legs or the ridiculous high heels she wore. He wasn't watching her hips sway when she walked by his desk in search of a misplaced file. No, he was being her friend and keeping her busy over the long, hot, New York summer.

They went to lunch most days, and in the loud atmosphere of crowded restaurants, they talked.

"Do you miss Heidi?"

"Of course."

"What do you miss most?" That smile again, like she had a secret and he was the only person in the world she would share it with.

"Other than sex on a regular basis? I miss sleeping beside her." He grabbed the check and almost missed the bright shade of red coloring her face. He hadn't expected to embarrass her and he idly wondered if she was a virgin. He remembered being seventeen and immediately dismissed the idea.

His mother had left for Europe a few days earlier, and Nathan was surprised that Claire chose to stay behind. She was nonchalant about it when he asked though.

"Would you want to travel with Grand- with Angela?" Her voice was neutral but she raised her eyebrows in disbelief.

Nathan couldn't stop the chuckle that escaped his throat. She obviously didn't want to talk bad about his mother, but really, he understood her reluctance to spend time with Angela Petrelli. He had been avoiding that all of his adult life.

"Well, you could have visited Peter in Ireland…" He knew she missed his brother as much as he did and he had been prepared to lose his time with her.

"He promised me he would be back before the summer is over. Besides, I figured he wanted some alone time with Caitlin." She shrugged and rolled her eyes, indicating just what she thought of Pete's new girlfriend.

They walked side by side out of the crowded eatery and into the heat of the city. "Well, I guess it's just the two of us for awhile." He grabbed her by the elbow when she tripped over a crack in the sidewalk. Nathan pretended he didn't feel the almost electric jolt that touching her caused him. "Careful."

"Someone in the government should really fix these sidewalks."

"Very funny. You should write your congressman."

 

The days passed quickly and they spent their evenings poolside, she in her red bikini, he would remove his jacket and tie.

"Why don't you ever get in the water, Nathan?" she asked as she sat on the diving board, her toes pointed toward the water below.

"I don't swim."

"You don't know how to swim?" she asked, then laughed at him and turned her head.

"I didn't say that, I said I don't swim. I know how to swim, I just don't like to." He lit a cigarette, his first of the night, and sighed as he exhaled. He watched as she dived into the pool, almost perfect, with just a splash as she slipped below the water.

She resurfaced next to his chair, resting her head on her hands as she watched him blow smoke rings. "Can I try that?" She was up and out of the water before he could answer, reaching for it. He didn't stop her, but smiled in amusement when she inhaled her first, making the tip bright orange. She coughed and sputtered for five minutes after. He didn't laugh, but couldn't hide his grin.

She tried again a few minutes later, only coughing twice that time. Nathan lit another and together they smoked in silence.

"Isn't so bad."

"You say that now. Don't let anyone know I let you start. I'll never hear the end of it." He didn't stop her when she reached for his drink, either. She sipped it slowly, and he watched her throat work when she tipped the glass back. Something had been set in motion when he met her all those months ago. At that moment he felt it swell and grow around them like some dark tangible thing. The spell broke when she lowered the glass and giggled.

 

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" They were eating a late breakfast one Sunday and Nathan had just watched as she drank milk from the carton. He was ignoring the urge to lick the white droplets off her upper lip.

"A lawyer."

He snorted into his coffee. "Cute. I'm serious. Do you want to go to college or a tech school?" The thought that she was going back to California in a few days was killing him. He had stopped himself from asking her to stay in New York on more than one occasion. It wasn't right that he wanted to keep her. She wasn't his to keep. He wasn't her father, she didn't need him.

"Why don't you think I'm serious? Is it because I'm blonde and a cheerleader?" She glared and then stuck her tongue out at him.

"I think you can go anywhere and do anything you choose to. You are smart, gorgeous, and probably the strongest woman I have ever met." He pretended to look at the business section of the paper. She had unwittingly dragged the statement out of him, and he wasn't surprised that every word was the truth.

She wasn't his daughter, but he cared for this girl much more than he should. He had survived disastrous things before: an exploding man, gunshot wounds, but a seventeen year-old girl would be his undoing.

_Control_. He could control this. He had to.

"I'm going to head into the office for a while; there's a new case I need to work on." He folded the newspaper and placed it on the table. She was buttering a piece of toast and glanced at him, eyes wide before nodding and biting into the bread. "I'll be back later."

She knew he was lying, he could tell by the set of her shoulders and down cast eyes. When had she learned to read him so well? In his attempt to be her friend and draw her closer, he had made his situation so much worse. It was then that he realized he was in love with the girl.

 

His office offered no reprieve from the onslaught of thoughts that assaulted him whenever he closed his eyes. His desk suffered his wrath the worst when he cleared it in frustration. The sound of glass crunching underfoot as he paced was dimly satisfying. This was not supposed to happen to him, he couldn't have feelings for a teenager, a teenager who he fathered in his careless youth nearly twenty years ago. Nathan ran up the stairs to the roof of the building before he could stop himself.

Too long he had watched her, dreamed about her, felt his hands burn with the need to touch her. He did his best to rip the sky apart, and when he failed that miserably, he considered ripping her apart.

He landed in the back yard without incident. Claire was there, in the red bikini that had tormented him all summer. She was reading a book and idly flicking ashes from a lit cigarette. She didn't acknowledge him when he approached. He stood over her, blocking the sun, knowing that eventually she would look up. When she continued to ignore him, his anger boiled over.

"Look at me, Claire." His voice was a strained growl. It got her attention and she closed the book on her lap and finally raised her eyes to his.

"That was quick. I didn't think I'd see you again today." She was still mad from earlier this morning; her jaw was set in anger. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm so sorry. I can't protect you anymore."

"Protect me from what?" she asked, confused now.

"Me."

Then he leaned over and pressed his mouth to hers, gently at first and then harder as his hunger for her grew. She didn't respond to him and placed her hands flat on his chest. He kissed across her cheek and bit gently on her earlobe.

"I don't understand this, Nathan."

"Let me explain it to you," he whispered in her ear as he untied the strings to her top, exposing her to the warm summer air. "I want you."

He kissed her again, licking his tongue inside her mouth, hoping she would respond this time. His hands began to tremble with nervousness. He suddenly felt like he was the seventeen year old, his belly full of butterfly wings at the touch of a pretty girl. But it was more than that; this was Claire he was opening himself up to. She had become so much more to him than a beautiful face from his shadowed past.

She pushed against him, gasping for breath. "Wait!"

"Am I your daddy?" he asked, gasping, his heart beat roaring in his ears. "Answer me!" He grabbed her wrists and pinned her to the lounge chair, keeping their eyes level, daring her to blink.

"No. You're not him." And then she was crying, tears running down her cheeks, more lovely broken than he had ever seen before. "I don't want you to be him."

The sight of her tears twisted something inside of him, the anger that had tinged the longing he felt for her disappeared. He was left with a desperate need to possess her body and bend her will to his own.

"Tell me what you do want." He lowered himself on top of her, easing down between her legs and making himself comfortable. "Say it."

He watched as she closed her eyes and a slow blush colored her face when she tried to turn her head. He touched her face, sliding his fingers down her cheek, keeping her from shutting him out.

"Please," she opened her eyes, "please touch me, Nathan." She blinked up at him, her emotions playing across her features; fear, shame, and naked desire that she couldn't hide from him or herself anymore.

"Okay, baby. It's going to be all right."

This time when he kissed her, her response was immediate. She pressed up against him, arching her back to get as much contact between their bodies as possible. Nathan continued to hold her wrists above her head, but used his other hand to touch her satin skin, starting at her neck and ending at her hip. He pushed her flat, splaying his hand across her belly while he kissed and licked down her neck to her shoulder. She tasted like salt and chlorine and she was _so_ warm, like molten heat radiating below him.

She moaned his name, encouraging him to explore her body with his fingers, lips, and tongue. Finally he untied the bottom to her bathing suit and flung it aside. He took a moment to stare at the girl laid bare before him. God, she was beautiful; did she know how much?

Nathan tasted her everywhere, slow and deliberate, even when Claire begged for more touch, more contact, more everything. This time when she started to cry, he didn't worry. He made shushing noises to soothe her and encouraged her to come apart in his arms.

When he pushed inside her, his hands were no longer shaking. They found a slow rhythm and by the end he was pinning her down again and covering her mouth with his, swallowing her words and smoothing his tongue against hers.

They lay entangled in the afternoon sun and woke shy and unsure of each other all over again. He held her in his arms, young and indestructible, and realized he wanted all the parts of her that weren't.

 

 

 


End file.
